The White Mans Burden: Kiplings Hymn to U.S.

Imperialism
In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a
poem entitled The White Mans Burden: The United States and The
Philippine Islands. In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. to take up
the burden of empire, as had Britain and other European nations.
Published in the February, 1899 issue of McClures Magazine, the
poem coincided with the beginning of the Philippine-American War
and U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty that placed Puerto Rico,
Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control. Theodore
Roosevelt, soon to become vice-president and then president, copied
the poem and sent it to his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge,
commenting that it was rather poor poetry, but good sense from the
expansion point of view. Not everyone was as favorably impressed
as Roosevelt. The racialized notion of the White Mans burden became a euphemism (a subtle
way of making an idea less offensive) for imperialism, and many anti-imperialists couched their
opposition in reaction to the phrase.
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(Lines 1 7)

"Take up the White Man's burden-Send forth the best ye breed-Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild
Half devil and half child.
(Lines 8 15)

Take up the White Man's burden-In patience to abide,

To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another's profit
And work another's gain.
(Lines 23 30)

Take up the White Man's burden-The savage wars of peace-Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought (nothing).
(Lines 31 38)

Take up the White Man's burden-No iron rule of kings,

But toil of serf and sweeper-The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,

The roads ye shall not tread,

Go, make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.
(Lines 39 46)

Take up the White Man's burden,

And reap his old reward-The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard-The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:-"Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Lines (47 54)

Take up the White Man's burden-Ye dare not stoop to less-Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness.
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.
(Lines 55 62)

Take up the White Man's burden!

Have done with childish days-The lightly-proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise:
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.

Source: Rudyard Kipling, The White Mans Burden: The United States & The Philippine Islands,
1899. Rudyard Kiplings Verse: Definitive Edition (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1929).

The Black Mans Burden: A Response to Kipling

African Americans, among many others, objected to the notion of the white mans burden.
Among the dozens of replies to Kiplings poem was The Black Mans Burden, written by AfricanAmerican clergyman and editor H. T. Johnson and
published in April 1899. A Black Mans Burden
Association was even organized with the goal of
demonstrating that mistreatment of brown people
in the Philippines was an extension of the
mistreatment of black Americans at home.

Pile on the Black Mans Burden.

'Tis nearest at your door;
Why heed long bleeding Cuba,
or dark Hawaiis shore?
Hail ye your fearless armies,
Which menace feeble folks
Who fight with clubs and arrows
and brook your rifles smoke.
Pile on the Black Mans Burden
His wail with laughter drown
Youve sealed the Red Mans problem,
And will take up the Brown,
In vain ye seek to end it,
With bullets, blood or death
Better by far defend it
With honors holy breath.

Source: H.T. Johnson, The Black Mans Burden, Voice of Missions, VII (Atlanta: April 1899), 1.
Reprinted in Willard B. Gatewood, Jr.,Black Americans and the White Mans Burden, 1898
1903 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), 1975, 183184.